![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
(no subject)
Oct. 17th, 2006 | 10:29 am
B.
Every evening B. gets dressed in his nicest clothes before he leaves for jail.
B. works as a landscaper during the day. For this reason, he showers every evening. He is particular about washing the mud from beneath his nails and along his cuticles. Almost every evening there are splinters lodged beneath the skin on his palms. Next to the sink he leaves a pair of tweezers that he can use to pull them out. It’s easier to take the slivers out in the shower when his palms are moist.
After he showers, he pulls his shirt on and buttons it from top to bottom. He is methodical with the buttons. Every hole, including those on his pockets, is buttoned. Next, he checks the shirt for loose threads and lint. If he finds a thread, unraveling from the stitching on the collar or the seams across the bottom, he takes the scissors next to his dresser and cuts it near the stitch. There are good reasons for never pulling on a thread. For these reasons he always cuts them with scissors.
The collar must be crisp and freshly ironed. B. knows that this may add another twenty to twenty-five minutes to the evening process. If the iron takes longer to heat up, or if the creases along the upper backside of the collar take longer to press out, B. knows he will be rushed when the deputy arrives.
He stands in front of the mirror.
In less than an hour, B. will remove these clothes and put on an orange uniform.
When the deputy arrives to pick him up, B. is usually sitting outside in a wooden chair smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee. The deputy pulls into the driveway and B. steps along the gravel and into the passenger side of the car. He doesn’t have to ride in the backseat any longer. The deputy asks him how his school is going. B. is in his last semester and getting a degree specializing in urban landscape. The projects for his classes require two hours of studying for every hour of class.
School is going well, B. says, lots of time in the library.
How’s work? B. asks.
The deputy takes a deep breath and relaxes making a leather-on-leather sound from his jacket and the seat. There’s plenty of paper work. A man was arrested for urinating next to an elementary school. He was drunk, homeless. There was a domestic dispute on 2nd just off of Main Street.
Not as bad as the first time, the Deputy says, but you never know.
B. sips his coffee and listens to the radio, a country song. Maybe Dwight Yokam, B. thinks. It’s getting colder at this elevation. The steam from his cup has fogged the passenger side window. B. tells a joke he heard about a mongoose and a gecko. The deputy laughs and pulls on to the highway. He drives slowly. Neither of them is in any hurry.
The city jail is located across the street from the city dump and adjacent from the city water processing plant. B. tells me it’s the section of the city where things are filtered or thrown out.
When they arrive, they step through two sets of bulletproof doors. The deputy nods to the woman behind the glass. She is always on the phone. She presses the release button and B. hears the long beep again. The door electronically unlocks and the deputy follows B. down the hallway. B.’s cowboy boots click against the laminate of the hallway. The sound has already become familiar.
They enter a room on the right side of the hallway and B. begins to take off his clothes. The deputy sits in a chair near a table and writes notes on some paper in a manila folder. B. folds his clothes as he takes them off; his shoes, his socks pulled together in a bundle, his pants folded in thirds and his button up shirt folded and lain so that it won’t wrinkle. Finally, when the deputy is ready, he removes his underwear.
Lift up, the deputy says.
B. holds his testicles and penis is his hands and lifts them to the deputy. The deputy looks between his legs and along his perineum. He has nothing hidden.
Good. Turn around, the deputy says.
B. turns around and pulls at either side of his buttocks for the deputy. Again, nothing is hidden.
B. used to lighten the uncomfortable silence at this point.
Now are you going to buy me a drink? B. would jokingly ask. The deputy would hold back a smile and continue writing.
B. doesn’t make jokes any more. This routine has become rote and they are both tired.
B. tells me that the inside of the cells are not like what he thought they would be.
Where I am, he says, in I-Block, it’s just one big room with bunks.
The building is shaped like a polygon. I-Block is a section of a wedge. The cell is an open space. The walls are cinder block painted white. The floor is a finished concrete.
The bunks are painted battleship gray, B. says, and the beds are a shoulder-width section of foam.
There are several tables around the room. No books are allowed in facility, so there is a library that consists of four shelves of books. B. just finished reading The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver. Most every Friday, when their block is clean, they watch a movie. Last week it was Fifth Element with Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich. I told him it looks like she is wearing packing tape in that entire movie.
It’s hot, he says. I agree and we laugh.
People like B. are put in I-Block. This means that everyone is on best behavior. If something goes wrong, they are revoked their daily work release. Everyone there is more or less the same age, twenties and thirties. Their sentence has granted them the ability to work during the day and return every night.
At night in I-block, before Lights Out, the guys sit around and play cards. B. is learning how to play the game, which is similar to Hearts.
It’s a lot like sex, B. tells me, ...if you don’t have a good partner you better have a good hand.
One night during the game, an inmate had just got off of work and entered the cell. He was catering a wedding. B. asked him how the wedding went.
Fine, he said looking over his shoulder at what cards B. was holding.
There was a long silence. Everyone around the table was waiting for B. to throw down his card. B. waited a long time. He looked at what had been played, then back at his hand. He looked at the other players, then back at his hand. He tapped his fingers along the table; he pulled at the whiskers along his sideburns. Finally, he threw down his card.
You knew you had to throw that one down! Why didn’t you just do it? The inmate who had come from the wedding yelled.
I was just making them think, making them wait. Fool, B. says.
You’re a fucking lame, the man from the wedding says as he climbed in his bunk.
Apparently, B. tells me, Lame is one of the most offensive things to say to someone while you’re in jail. It’s similar to calling a homosexual a faggot, or a Negro, a nigger.
Everyone at the card table grew silent. The man from the wedding lay in his bunk yelling at B. The room was clenched and tight, waiting.
It’s one of those moments, B. says, when you know… if the other guy is angry enough to clock me in the face, I just have to sit in my seat and take it. I’m going to have to let this guy just beat the snot out of me, because I don’t want to lose my privileges. I want to work and go to school.
I listen to him and try to physically imagine what this would feel like.
B. tells me nothing happened and the room eventually relaxed. Everyone is on best behavior.
A week ago, more inmates folded into I-block. While B. was walking through school, a friend of B.’s approached him on the sidewalk. He told B. that he knew someone going in and wondered if B. would look out for him.
His name is N., he told him.
B. agreed to do this. Someone did this for him when he first went in. Besides, the new guy is in for the same reasons.
When you first get there, and you have no money or means, the facility gives you an Indigent Pack. It is filled with items to get you started. The toothbrush is about three inches long; the cup for water holds roughly six ounces of fluid. There is a pile of folded bedding handed to you. The bedding is donated from the city hospital.
When he walked in, he was white and scared, B. says, I asked him if he was N. and he said yes. I said I’m a friend of so-and-so. You could just see fear the fall from his face. Like everything was going to be okay.
B. gave him a regular toothbrush, a bigger drinking cup and some Top Ramen. He showed N. how to make the bed so it’s easier to sleep with the bedding. He told him where to order food and the little things he will need from the in-house commissary.
It’s like I’m an elder, B. says to me and laughs, I just hook them up with little things.
I asked B. why he gets dressed every night. He tells me, to remind him.
The other night, a guy came in, B. tells me. He was drunk or had been drinking. We all knew it. He was being belligerent and loud. We could smell it on him. The guards took him into another room to give him a Breathalyzer, but the machine was broken. The guy was yelling at the cops about proving he was drunk. He was just fucking himself. I knew when I looked at him, that I wasn’t like him. He couldn’t do this, but I can.
When I get dressed, B. says, it separates me from what I’m doing. I’m different. When I say it like that it sounds pointless, but I still do it.
It doesn’t, I tell him, it sounds smart.
It’s also comforting to put on nice, clean clothes in the morning, B. says.
At first it was a new experience, something B. had never done before. But now, the novelty has worn off and he is half way through his sentence. He will be out for Christmas, but not for Thanksgiving. During finals, he will be serving his last week.
At night, B. sleeps with earplugs. He bought them at the in-house commissary. It’s hard to get to sleep most of the time. Most of the inmates are still up and talking. The earplugs don’t always help. He listens to the muffled drone of conversations that filters through the foam. When the fluorescent lights go out, they are replaced by a red light. He listens to the high-pitch tone of electric current that goes through wires and the bulb. It fills the room red.
In the morning, the deputy escorts B. out of the facility.
He enters a room on down the hallway and on the left side, and takes his time getting dressed. His socks first pulled up to the mid-section of his calves, then his pants. He puts his shirt on and buttons every hole. Finally he tucks the bottom of the shirt into his pants and then smoothes the creases out around his waist with his hand. The belt he picked up at a thrift store last year still fits nicely even though he feels he has has lost weight.
On the way out B. tells the deputy another joke.
Deputy, what’s the difference between a stagecoach driver and a deputy? B. asks.
The deputy shrugs.
A stagecoach driver only has to look at six assholes a day.
You just brightened my day, he tells B. and laughs.
They walk to the car and smell the odor blowing in from the neighboring buildings. The mornings are cold before the sun comes over the hills.
Every evening B. gets dressed in his nicest clothes before he leaves for jail.
B. works as a landscaper during the day. For this reason, he showers every evening. He is particular about washing the mud from beneath his nails and along his cuticles. Almost every evening there are splinters lodged beneath the skin on his palms. Next to the sink he leaves a pair of tweezers that he can use to pull them out. It’s easier to take the slivers out in the shower when his palms are moist.
After he showers, he pulls his shirt on and buttons it from top to bottom. He is methodical with the buttons. Every hole, including those on his pockets, is buttoned. Next, he checks the shirt for loose threads and lint. If he finds a thread, unraveling from the stitching on the collar or the seams across the bottom, he takes the scissors next to his dresser and cuts it near the stitch. There are good reasons for never pulling on a thread. For these reasons he always cuts them with scissors.
The collar must be crisp and freshly ironed. B. knows that this may add another twenty to twenty-five minutes to the evening process. If the iron takes longer to heat up, or if the creases along the upper backside of the collar take longer to press out, B. knows he will be rushed when the deputy arrives.
He stands in front of the mirror.
In less than an hour, B. will remove these clothes and put on an orange uniform.
When the deputy arrives to pick him up, B. is usually sitting outside in a wooden chair smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee. The deputy pulls into the driveway and B. steps along the gravel and into the passenger side of the car. He doesn’t have to ride in the backseat any longer. The deputy asks him how his school is going. B. is in his last semester and getting a degree specializing in urban landscape. The projects for his classes require two hours of studying for every hour of class.
The deputy takes a deep breath and relaxes making a leather-on-leather sound from his jacket and the seat. There’s plenty of paper work. A man was arrested for urinating next to an elementary school. He was drunk, homeless. There was a domestic dispute on 2nd just off of Main Street.
Not as bad as the first time, the Deputy says, but you never know.
B. sips his coffee and listens to the radio, a country song. Maybe Dwight Yokam, B. thinks. It’s getting colder at this elevation. The steam from his cup has fogged the passenger side window. B. tells a joke he heard about a mongoose and a gecko. The deputy laughs and pulls on to the highway. He drives slowly. Neither of them is in any hurry.
The city jail is located across the street from the city dump and adjacent from the city water processing plant. B. tells me it’s the section of the city where things are filtered or thrown out.
When they arrive, they step through two sets of bulletproof doors. The deputy nods to the woman behind the glass. She is always on the phone. She presses the release button and B. hears the long beep again. The door electronically unlocks and the deputy follows B. down the hallway. B.’s cowboy boots click against the laminate of the hallway. The sound has already become familiar.
They enter a room on the right side of the hallway and B. begins to take off his clothes. The deputy sits in a chair near a table and writes notes on some paper in a manila folder. B. folds his clothes as he takes them off; his shoes, his socks pulled together in a bundle, his pants folded in thirds and his button up shirt folded and lain so that it won’t wrinkle. Finally, when the deputy is ready, he removes his underwear.
Lift up, the deputy says.
B. holds his testicles and penis is his hands and lifts them to the deputy. The deputy looks between his legs and along his perineum. He has nothing hidden.
Good. Turn around, the deputy says.
B. turns around and pulls at either side of his buttocks for the deputy. Again, nothing is hidden.
B. used to lighten the uncomfortable silence at this point.
Now are you going to buy me a drink? B. would jokingly ask. The deputy would hold back a smile and continue writing.
B. doesn’t make jokes any more. This routine has become rote and they are both tired.
B. tells me that the inside of the cells are not like what he thought they would be.
Where I am, he says, in I-Block, it’s just one big room with bunks.
The building is shaped like a polygon. I-Block is a section of a wedge. The cell is an open space. The walls are cinder block painted white. The floor is a finished concrete.
The bunks are painted battleship gray, B. says, and the beds are a shoulder-width section of foam.
There are several tables around the room. No books are allowed in facility, so there is a library that consists of four shelves of books. B. just finished reading The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver. Most every Friday, when their block is clean, they watch a movie. Last week it was Fifth Element with Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich. I told him it looks like she is wearing packing tape in that entire movie.
It’s hot, he says. I agree and we laugh.
People like B. are put in I-Block. This means that everyone is on best behavior. If something goes wrong, they are revoked their daily work release. Everyone there is more or less the same age, twenties and thirties. Their sentence has granted them the ability to work during the day and return every night.
At night in I-block, before Lights Out, the guys sit around and play cards. B. is learning how to play the game, which is similar to Hearts.
It’s a lot like sex, B. tells me, ...if you don’t have a good partner you better have a good hand.
One night during the game, an inmate had just got off of work and entered the cell. He was catering a wedding. B. asked him how the wedding went.
Fine, he said looking over his shoulder at what cards B. was holding.
There was a long silence. Everyone around the table was waiting for B. to throw down his card. B. waited a long time. He looked at what had been played, then back at his hand. He looked at the other players, then back at his hand. He tapped his fingers along the table; he pulled at the whiskers along his sideburns. Finally, he threw down his card.
You knew you had to throw that one down! Why didn’t you just do it? The inmate who had come from the wedding yelled.
I was just making them think, making them wait. Fool, B. says.
You’re a fucking lame, the man from the wedding says as he climbed in his bunk.
Apparently, B. tells me, Lame is one of the most offensive things to say to someone while you’re in jail. It’s similar to calling a homosexual a faggot, or a Negro, a nigger.
Everyone at the card table grew silent. The man from the wedding lay in his bunk yelling at B. The room was clenched and tight, waiting.
It’s one of those moments, B. says, when you know… if the other guy is angry enough to clock me in the face, I just have to sit in my seat and take it. I’m going to have to let this guy just beat the snot out of me, because I don’t want to lose my privileges. I want to work and go to school.
I listen to him and try to physically imagine what this would feel like.
B. tells me nothing happened and the room eventually relaxed. Everyone is on best behavior.
A week ago, more inmates folded into I-block. While B. was walking through school, a friend of B.’s approached him on the sidewalk. He told B. that he knew someone going in and wondered if B. would look out for him.
His name is N., he told him.
B. agreed to do this. Someone did this for him when he first went in. Besides, the new guy is in for the same reasons.
When you first get there, and you have no money or means, the facility gives you an Indigent Pack. It is filled with items to get you started. The toothbrush is about three inches long; the cup for water holds roughly six ounces of fluid. There is a pile of folded bedding handed to you. The bedding is donated from the city hospital.
When he walked in, he was white and scared, B. says, I asked him if he was N. and he said yes. I said I’m a friend of so-and-so. You could just see fear the fall from his face. Like everything was going to be okay.
B. gave him a regular toothbrush, a bigger drinking cup and some Top Ramen. He showed N. how to make the bed so it’s easier to sleep with the bedding. He told him where to order food and the little things he will need from the in-house commissary.
It’s like I’m an elder, B. says to me and laughs, I just hook them up with little things.
I asked B. why he gets dressed every night. He tells me, to remind him.
The other night, a guy came in, B. tells me. He was drunk or had been drinking. We all knew it. He was being belligerent and loud. We could smell it on him. The guards took him into another room to give him a Breathalyzer, but the machine was broken. The guy was yelling at the cops about proving he was drunk. He was just fucking himself. I knew when I looked at him, that I wasn’t like him. He couldn’t do this, but I can.
When I get dressed, B. says, it separates me from what I’m doing. I’m different. When I say it like that it sounds pointless, but I still do it.
It doesn’t, I tell him, it sounds smart.
It’s also comforting to put on nice, clean clothes in the morning, B. says.
At first it was a new experience, something B. had never done before. But now, the novelty has worn off and he is half way through his sentence. He will be out for Christmas, but not for Thanksgiving. During finals, he will be serving his last week.
At night, B. sleeps with earplugs. He bought them at the in-house commissary. It’s hard to get to sleep most of the time. Most of the inmates are still up and talking. The earplugs don’t always help. He listens to the muffled drone of conversations that filters through the foam. When the fluorescent lights go out, they are replaced by a red light. He listens to the high-pitch tone of electric current that goes through wires and the bulb. It fills the room red.
In the morning, the deputy escorts B. out of the facility.
He enters a room on down the hallway and on the left side, and takes his time getting dressed. His socks first pulled up to the mid-section of his calves, then his pants. He puts his shirt on and buttons every hole. Finally he tucks the bottom of the shirt into his pants and then smoothes the creases out around his waist with his hand. The belt he picked up at a thrift store last year still fits nicely even though he feels he has has lost weight.
On the way out B. tells the deputy another joke.
Deputy, what’s the difference between a stagecoach driver and a deputy? B. asks.
The deputy shrugs.
A stagecoach driver only has to look at six assholes a day.
You just brightened my day, he tells B. and laughs.
They walk to the car and smell the odor blowing in from the neighboring buildings. The mornings are cold before the sun comes over the hills.
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
+piece in progress+
Oct. 13th, 2006 | 02:35 pm
Early Morning
“Mass action is not possible while the masses remain unconvinced of the purposes it is pursuing or the means to achieve them.” –A. Gramsci
“And here’s what’s happening in your neck of the woods.” -A. Roker
August 21, 2006
“Mission Accomplished”
a banner streaks across a make-shift stage. people have gathered here to protest; The lawn surrounding the Salt Lake City and County building seemed an appropriate place. appropriate, in the sense that protesting should be within a “safe and permitted” arena of conduct. this event is scheduled for pre-designated hours and pre-designated areas.
a five-year-old carries a sign which reads “George Bush is a War Criminal”. his little brother carries another, “Stop Mad Cowboy Disease”.
**
In the spring of 2000 I had just finished my first of what would become three years working for the Sundance Film Festival. When the festival ended I had no place to call home, my lodging in Park City was only temporary. My grandparents had owned a house in South Ogden. Because they were in their 10th annual status as Snowbirds, they would be returning from Yuma, Arizona within a month. I could stay there until I could find a place back in the city.
My grandmother enjoyed having me around. Instead of finishing my education in the city, I mowed lawns, pulled weeds between Irises and Chysanthemums, fixed fountains, sprinklers and grew jalapeños, tomatoes and yellow crooknecks.
Two years later, I was still living with them.
**
Viva Zapatistas
lining the sidewalk like militants, a group of teenagers dressed in black with scarves over their mouths, are the new revolutionaries. i wonder if they are aware of the Zapatistas movement. i can see the tag of an american eagle beneath one of the members black garments. do these kids know the sacrifices made? does their plight equate with a revolutionary movement of this nature?
perhaps, they do. i still can’t help but to feel uncomfortable about using this term.
a line of signage encircles the fountain. on each sign is written an inspirational quote from intellectuals throughout history.
wordsworth has already fallen down.
**
After having lived in the city beforehand, South Ogden seemed like a getaway from the din of busy-ness. This segment of Ogden city, located off an old highway, was a developers dream. The oldest establishment I can remember in the area was a small golf course nestled in the middle of a hillside suburban sprawl. The modern development of chain-restaurants and fast-food are here now, and to my grandfather’s struggle. It was difficult to love the land the way it was, while also having a weakness for a Hardee’s Sour Dough ¼ lb. burger with curly fries.
I arrived back into this place and tried to assure myself of the temporariness of my staying there. It wasn’t that the lifestyle living with my grandparents was comfortable, though it was. And, as much as I would like to say it was about being in a place where I could assist them, helping them through the work that needed to be done every week, it wasn’t that either; at least not completely. In the end, the reasons for staying were teetering on the precipice between selfish and generous, neither of which I could begin to understand at the time.
The earlier the morning, I would learn, the more time there is to talk.
**
One Nation Under Fraud
bob bristler from the Green Party has the only remaining tent on the city and county grass now; he’s mass communicating. he shakes hands with someone and sidesteps his way around the tent to get closer. from this distance, he looks genuine. i want to believe in his cause.
the park is being cleaned now. men with high-powered water guns are spraying the remnants of protest. a burly man in his mid-fifties throws posters and placards in the back of a pick-up truck.
bob wouldn’t be happy with what has happened here.
at what point does activism become littering and loitering?
one of the remaining kids still walks around with his silk-screened t-shirt of Che Guevara.
**
Beginning at five-thirty, my grandparents would sit over bitter coffee and three methodical rounds of Cribbage. This was tradition. Over their morning cheers of my arrival, I crept my way along the new laid linoleum. It didn’t seem to matter how late my naïve choices had kept me up the night before. Next to the oven I would fill up my coffee mug, adding enough sugar and powdered creamer to disguise the canned Folgers.
At the table I would sit and tally the itinerary of daily chores, the projects for the week, the horrible hands being dealt. When my grandmother received a bad deal, she would tell him he didn’t love her anymore. When my grandfather received a poor deal, he would grunt and huff. This meant he loved her despite it. I watched how his old hands would shuffle and deal. The cracks in his fingernails seem to split through the skin. The skin had become delicate with age and, later would only get worse. This led to a tacit memory game in which he could never place where his new wounds had come from. A chair, a doorway, a light switch, a circular saw, it didn’t seem to matter. Her hands did the same. With the years she had lost the feminine slender and what had replaced it was memories, crevices cut deep with experience. When her shuffle and deal came around, it was thoughtless and elegant; there was no patronage for performance, memory just takes over.
**
2004 No More War
is this placard being reused? it seems a little late.
i walk to the east side of the block. a man wears a sandwich board.
“As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil they set out to destroy.” –Christopher Dawson
even I will contend that it’s hard to quote a verbose sociologist and theorist. sometimes you have to wear the message in lieu of picketing.
**
More often than not, the morning news –which would be interrupting in the distance- would guide the conversation. My grandmother would pass the deal on to my grandfather, bring her coffee to her lips, adjust her floral print mumu, and say something about the declining state of our society.
My own views, both political and oft times moral, lay at the other side of the table, the side where my own coffee was getting cold. We merely saw the world differently, this I was growing to appreciate. It wasn’t that we were looking for opposing sides it just came naturally packaged this way.
Nevertheless, it always seemed to begin here.
**
“oh. a writer, i see. i do that too, you know.” an man with an overgrown beard and a top hat pedals his bike up to me as i sit on a bench. three blue bungee cords strap in a crate with plastic bags onto his seat. his eyes are starkly blue and protruding so much it’s as if they want to leave his head.
“i wake up in the middle of the night and take a bong hit, whether i need to or not,” he tells me, “and i write, just like you. i record the day, the time and where i am.”
somehow i believe him and this seems understandable.
after he tells me about his short-lived career as a scientist, the difference in light-speeds from stars depending on their color (which notably, “einstein didn’t know” he does), and how the earth was created (“light matter, dark matter. That’s how.”), i look for a way to get out of the conversation. looking up, i see another protester carrying away a sign.
The Rapture Is Not an Exit Strategy
“I know how the world began, you don’t,” he says. He’s right. I wasn’t there.
**
Dialogues between my grandparents and I would usually unfold in a dance of sorts. If a comment was made about the decline of inspiration and ambition from political leaders and representatives, it was most likely followed with something akin to an acquiescent “Here Here!” from my side of the table. Likewise, we were similarly aligned when it came to the allocation of taxes for education, costs of tuition and learning programs. It seemed more often than not, most of our concerns were the same. But, as with most differing discourses with family and politics, it doesn’t ever seem to be the end that’s the problem, it’s the means.
So, if a certain sex scandal from a representative in Texas or Georgia had made the morning media, or if the Vatican and the state of Massachusetts couldn’t seem to agree with what to do about being in love with someone of the same gender, it all was reduced to one thing.
“This all happened,” my grandmother said, adjusting the shoulder of her mumu, “when they took prayer out of the schools.”
**
a man walks up to a girl in her mid-twenties. he offers her an american flag. “no, thank you,” she says. “hey! it’s still our country. we can take it back!” he yells. she wipes the spittle from the corner of her eye and walks away. she too, seems unsure of the efficacy of this gesture.
everyone is yelling, but to whom?
these grounds are pulsing with an energy, an energy of change. people want something, it’s obvious, but the placards don’t seem to be helping.
there seems to be something about the process that is skewing my appreciation.
The Only Bush I Trust is My Wife’s
**
There is a pivotal point where the delicacies of politics and family can retard a relationship that was once founded on homemade ice cream and ham sandwiches. As a kid growing up in this South Ogden house, I was merely expected to be a well-behaved child. This was the extent of my relationship with my grandparents and it was fulfilling for both parties.
There were swimming lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays, during which my underdeveloped scrawny frame would allow for a certain amount of participation. At a certain point my thermostat-like lips would turn bright purple and my Morse Code-shiver would signal distress. I would be excused from the pool. In the afternoons, there were painting lessons taught by my great-grandmother, which would often lead to long philosophical conflicts about how much paint should or should not be on the brush. I was partial to the textured Van Gough, while she –still reasonably living in the Depression- fancied the new style of the wispy Ross.
However, to insure we were well-rounded contributing members, our chores were duly noted. There were strawberries to be picked, beans to be snapped, weeds to be pulled, corn to be husked and, inevitably, ice cream to be made. There was an independence that had to be instilled in us from the very beginning. If the house were to offer us these amenities, it would equally teach us to respect the work put into them. If we wanted a treehouse, we built it. If we wanted a glass of water, we poured it.
**
This War Is a Lie
a scantily-clad man walks by me in what appears to be underwear, gold and tight. he is sporting a tank-top made from small interlocking chains, a gladiator of sorts in briefs. i begin to wince when i think about his chest hair getting caught.
i remember the girl who not moments ago, refused to take the flag. a part of me refuses to accept this as well. i still wonder what this political gesture means.
**
Sitting at this early morning table, I wasn’t a kid any longer. My education had moved me away to the “big city” and I was solidifying my already secular choices. However, this meant that I had strayed –yet again, and even further. I had squandered their morals, the ones they had prayed for me to keep. Once the kid who sang “Father Abraham” in front of Sunday gatherings, I was now the prodigal grandson who was welcomed home when he was in need.
But across a wooden cribbage board, it was the divide that separated us. Our perspectives were split by the moments between where we had been and where we were going; what we had learned and what we had taken away. If we were both raised in one book, at some point I had deviated to numerous. It was a parallax that separated us.
What had gone wrong with society was emblematic in the precise liberal education in which I was a dues-paying member. Sure we both wanted cheaper education. But the education came at an expense, and to her, it was a moral one.
“I’m not sure that the loss of prayer in schools is the reason behind homosexuality,” I would put kindly, but hopeful I wasn’t going to be jettisoned to my liberal corner.
“It’s the morals,” she would respond, “once they took God out of schools, we forgot what we stood for.”
“There something to be said for differing cultures,” I could feel the conversation beginning, “we all don’t believe in the same God. There are so many differing belief systems. It seems a little unfair to have everyone praying to yours.”
She shuffles and deals. It’s the last hand and my grandfather is in the stinkhole. She wins the first round and my grandfather begins to deal the next game.
The conversation begins to unfold. To my argument of acceptance and diversity, she wonders where the line can be drawn. We weave in and out, pivot and step, dip and finally curtsy. Three games played, the dance is beautiful and the coffee is finally gone.
There are tomatoes to be picked, and a sprinkler line that needs to be patched.
**
i walk away from grounds and sit myself in a bar on second south. the sun is beginning to set and i watch the remnants of it reflecting between buildings. my backpack is heavy and my shirt has become wet. i’m confused and wondering what i’ve just seen. was this a dialogue, or merely self-reaffirming energy between two-thousand like-minded people?
a few miles away, a speech is given to a crowd who support the current administration.
it feels like the protesters i've just seen are thousands of miles from making a difference.
surely, this isn’t what activism used to look like. why does it seem so displaced?
the bartender asks me if i would like another shot to wash down my beer. i smile and ask him where he’s from.
“Mass action is not possible while the masses remain unconvinced of the purposes it is pursuing or the means to achieve them.” –A. Gramsci
“And here’s what’s happening in your neck of the woods.” -A. Roker
August 21, 2006
“Mission Accomplished”
a banner streaks across a make-shift stage. people have gathered here to protest; The lawn surrounding the Salt Lake City and County building seemed an appropriate place. appropriate, in the sense that protesting should be within a “safe and permitted” arena of conduct. this event is scheduled for pre-designated hours and pre-designated areas.
a five-year-old carries a sign which reads “George Bush is a War Criminal”. his little brother carries another, “Stop Mad Cowboy Disease”.
**
In the spring of 2000 I had just finished my first of what would become three years working for the Sundance Film Festival. When the festival ended I had no place to call home, my lodging in Park City was only temporary. My grandparents had owned a house in South Ogden. Because they were in their 10th annual status as Snowbirds, they would be returning from Yuma, Arizona within a month. I could stay there until I could find a place back in the city.
My grandmother enjoyed having me around. Instead of finishing my education in the city, I mowed lawns, pulled weeds between Irises and Chysanthemums, fixed fountains, sprinklers and grew jalapeños, tomatoes and yellow crooknecks.
Two years later, I was still living with them.
**
Viva Zapatistas
lining the sidewalk like militants, a group of teenagers dressed in black with scarves over their mouths, are the new revolutionaries. i wonder if they are aware of the Zapatistas movement. i can see the tag of an american eagle beneath one of the members black garments. do these kids know the sacrifices made? does their plight equate with a revolutionary movement of this nature?
perhaps, they do. i still can’t help but to feel uncomfortable about using this term.
a line of signage encircles the fountain. on each sign is written an inspirational quote from intellectuals throughout history.
wordsworth has already fallen down.
**
After having lived in the city beforehand, South Ogden seemed like a getaway from the din of busy-ness. This segment of Ogden city, located off an old highway, was a developers dream. The oldest establishment I can remember in the area was a small golf course nestled in the middle of a hillside suburban sprawl. The modern development of chain-restaurants and fast-food are here now, and to my grandfather’s struggle. It was difficult to love the land the way it was, while also having a weakness for a Hardee’s Sour Dough ¼ lb. burger with curly fries.
I arrived back into this place and tried to assure myself of the temporariness of my staying there. It wasn’t that the lifestyle living with my grandparents was comfortable, though it was. And, as much as I would like to say it was about being in a place where I could assist them, helping them through the work that needed to be done every week, it wasn’t that either; at least not completely. In the end, the reasons for staying were teetering on the precipice between selfish and generous, neither of which I could begin to understand at the time.
The earlier the morning, I would learn, the more time there is to talk.
**
One Nation Under Fraud
bob bristler from the Green Party has the only remaining tent on the city and county grass now; he’s mass communicating. he shakes hands with someone and sidesteps his way around the tent to get closer. from this distance, he looks genuine. i want to believe in his cause.
the park is being cleaned now. men with high-powered water guns are spraying the remnants of protest. a burly man in his mid-fifties throws posters and placards in the back of a pick-up truck.
bob wouldn’t be happy with what has happened here.
at what point does activism become littering and loitering?
one of the remaining kids still walks around with his silk-screened t-shirt of Che Guevara.
**
Beginning at five-thirty, my grandparents would sit over bitter coffee and three methodical rounds of Cribbage. This was tradition. Over their morning cheers of my arrival, I crept my way along the new laid linoleum. It didn’t seem to matter how late my naïve choices had kept me up the night before. Next to the oven I would fill up my coffee mug, adding enough sugar and powdered creamer to disguise the canned Folgers.
At the table I would sit and tally the itinerary of daily chores, the projects for the week, the horrible hands being dealt. When my grandmother received a bad deal, she would tell him he didn’t love her anymore. When my grandfather received a poor deal, he would grunt and huff. This meant he loved her despite it. I watched how his old hands would shuffle and deal. The cracks in his fingernails seem to split through the skin. The skin had become delicate with age and, later would only get worse. This led to a tacit memory game in which he could never place where his new wounds had come from. A chair, a doorway, a light switch, a circular saw, it didn’t seem to matter. Her hands did the same. With the years she had lost the feminine slender and what had replaced it was memories, crevices cut deep with experience. When her shuffle and deal came around, it was thoughtless and elegant; there was no patronage for performance, memory just takes over.
**
2004 No More War
is this placard being reused? it seems a little late.
i walk to the east side of the block. a man wears a sandwich board.
“As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil they set out to destroy.” –Christopher Dawson
even I will contend that it’s hard to quote a verbose sociologist and theorist. sometimes you have to wear the message in lieu of picketing.
**
More often than not, the morning news –which would be interrupting in the distance- would guide the conversation. My grandmother would pass the deal on to my grandfather, bring her coffee to her lips, adjust her floral print mumu, and say something about the declining state of our society.
My own views, both political and oft times moral, lay at the other side of the table, the side where my own coffee was getting cold. We merely saw the world differently, this I was growing to appreciate. It wasn’t that we were looking for opposing sides it just came naturally packaged this way.
Nevertheless, it always seemed to begin here.
**
“oh. a writer, i see. i do that too, you know.” an man with an overgrown beard and a top hat pedals his bike up to me as i sit on a bench. three blue bungee cords strap in a crate with plastic bags onto his seat. his eyes are starkly blue and protruding so much it’s as if they want to leave his head.
“i wake up in the middle of the night and take a bong hit, whether i need to or not,” he tells me, “and i write, just like you. i record the day, the time and where i am.”
somehow i believe him and this seems understandable.
after he tells me about his short-lived career as a scientist, the difference in light-speeds from stars depending on their color (which notably, “einstein didn’t know” he does), and how the earth was created (“light matter, dark matter. That’s how.”), i look for a way to get out of the conversation. looking up, i see another protester carrying away a sign.
The Rapture Is Not an Exit Strategy
“I know how the world began, you don’t,” he says. He’s right. I wasn’t there.
**
Dialogues between my grandparents and I would usually unfold in a dance of sorts. If a comment was made about the decline of inspiration and ambition from political leaders and representatives, it was most likely followed with something akin to an acquiescent “Here Here!” from my side of the table. Likewise, we were similarly aligned when it came to the allocation of taxes for education, costs of tuition and learning programs. It seemed more often than not, most of our concerns were the same. But, as with most differing discourses with family and politics, it doesn’t ever seem to be the end that’s the problem, it’s the means.
So, if a certain sex scandal from a representative in Texas or Georgia had made the morning media, or if the Vatican and the state of Massachusetts couldn’t seem to agree with what to do about being in love with someone of the same gender, it all was reduced to one thing.
“This all happened,” my grandmother said, adjusting the shoulder of her mumu, “when they took prayer out of the schools.”
**
a man walks up to a girl in her mid-twenties. he offers her an american flag. “no, thank you,” she says. “hey! it’s still our country. we can take it back!” he yells. she wipes the spittle from the corner of her eye and walks away. she too, seems unsure of the efficacy of this gesture.
everyone is yelling, but to whom?
these grounds are pulsing with an energy, an energy of change. people want something, it’s obvious, but the placards don’t seem to be helping.
there seems to be something about the process that is skewing my appreciation.
The Only Bush I Trust is My Wife’s
**
There is a pivotal point where the delicacies of politics and family can retard a relationship that was once founded on homemade ice cream and ham sandwiches. As a kid growing up in this South Ogden house, I was merely expected to be a well-behaved child. This was the extent of my relationship with my grandparents and it was fulfilling for both parties.
There were swimming lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays, during which my underdeveloped scrawny frame would allow for a certain amount of participation. At a certain point my thermostat-like lips would turn bright purple and my Morse Code-shiver would signal distress. I would be excused from the pool. In the afternoons, there were painting lessons taught by my great-grandmother, which would often lead to long philosophical conflicts about how much paint should or should not be on the brush. I was partial to the textured Van Gough, while she –still reasonably living in the Depression- fancied the new style of the wispy Ross.
However, to insure we were well-rounded contributing members, our chores were duly noted. There were strawberries to be picked, beans to be snapped, weeds to be pulled, corn to be husked and, inevitably, ice cream to be made. There was an independence that had to be instilled in us from the very beginning. If the house were to offer us these amenities, it would equally teach us to respect the work put into them. If we wanted a treehouse, we built it. If we wanted a glass of water, we poured it.
**
This War Is a Lie
a scantily-clad man walks by me in what appears to be underwear, gold and tight. he is sporting a tank-top made from small interlocking chains, a gladiator of sorts in briefs. i begin to wince when i think about his chest hair getting caught.
i remember the girl who not moments ago, refused to take the flag. a part of me refuses to accept this as well. i still wonder what this political gesture means.
**
Sitting at this early morning table, I wasn’t a kid any longer. My education had moved me away to the “big city” and I was solidifying my already secular choices. However, this meant that I had strayed –yet again, and even further. I had squandered their morals, the ones they had prayed for me to keep. Once the kid who sang “Father Abraham” in front of Sunday gatherings, I was now the prodigal grandson who was welcomed home when he was in need.
But across a wooden cribbage board, it was the divide that separated us. Our perspectives were split by the moments between where we had been and where we were going; what we had learned and what we had taken away. If we were both raised in one book, at some point I had deviated to numerous. It was a parallax that separated us.
What had gone wrong with society was emblematic in the precise liberal education in which I was a dues-paying member. Sure we both wanted cheaper education. But the education came at an expense, and to her, it was a moral one.
“I’m not sure that the loss of prayer in schools is the reason behind homosexuality,” I would put kindly, but hopeful I wasn’t going to be jettisoned to my liberal corner.
“It’s the morals,” she would respond, “once they took God out of schools, we forgot what we stood for.”
“There something to be said for differing cultures,” I could feel the conversation beginning, “we all don’t believe in the same God. There are so many differing belief systems. It seems a little unfair to have everyone praying to yours.”
She shuffles and deals. It’s the last hand and my grandfather is in the stinkhole. She wins the first round and my grandfather begins to deal the next game.
The conversation begins to unfold. To my argument of acceptance and diversity, she wonders where the line can be drawn. We weave in and out, pivot and step, dip and finally curtsy. Three games played, the dance is beautiful and the coffee is finally gone.
There are tomatoes to be picked, and a sprinkler line that needs to be patched.
**
i walk away from grounds and sit myself in a bar on second south. the sun is beginning to set and i watch the remnants of it reflecting between buildings. my backpack is heavy and my shirt has become wet. i’m confused and wondering what i’ve just seen. was this a dialogue, or merely self-reaffirming energy between two-thousand like-minded people?
a few miles away, a speech is given to a crowd who support the current administration.
it feels like the protesters i've just seen are thousands of miles from making a difference.
surely, this isn’t what activism used to look like. why does it seem so displaced?
the bartender asks me if i would like another shot to wash down my beer. i smile and ask him where he’s from.
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
I'd rather be fishin'
Aug. 25th, 2006 | 09:31 am
The Presidential office can get a little stuffy sometimes. Good thing there's a little Home away from Home called Kennebunkport, Maine.... at least it's not hurricane season.
"They're still repairing those levees, right? Can we check to see if someone is on that?"
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Now with Rollover Minutes...
Aug. 8th, 2006 | 03:53 pm
We never think about who it will hurt... or how it will be interpreted.
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
these moments past, these ghosts...
Jul. 28th, 2006 | 12:06 am
"i love you, so how can this be wrong?"
-TAL
beautiful night.
-http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?f
When summer finally arrived, I don't believe we knew what the heat was going to bring. The nights have brought in a macabre warmth that sets apart even the most tolerable late night breezes from those that are thick and full and rushing across the porch. Now we are, it seems, feeling the summer's evenings coming to an end. I watch a show in a small shack that's been here for years, a dilapidated structure stuck in the middle of the sickness of the uber-hip and the something that is genuine. From this point of view, I suppose it's easy to sit back and decorate these folks, this moment, with a bitter taste of urgency. Every piece could be entirely authentic from wherever you stand. I think this authenticity lies in the moment between what is happening and the simple, undiluted point of perception. You remember being there, don't you?
"Beautiful party..."
The connection of voices, carrying their profound and their menial sounds; a boy drops a plastic cup, another falls from a stoop. I hear a voice in the distance asking me where I've been. How did you answer? I choose to answer with the menial, there seems to be nothing in the profound.
"I've been around. I've been good."
My voice only slightly cracks, not because I'm drunk, which I am, but because I am lying. There has been so much beauty, most of it right in front of my face. I'm lying not because I don't want to tell them, but because I'm embarassed that I've missed so much - so much I won't be able to tell them about. I've seen so many incredible instances.... between the lines worn in a middle-aged woman's face, tired and beautiful, trying to bring another into this world without collapsing in unbearble lethargy, to a an old man's shoes that have blown their own stitching in the toes, and still, steadily keeping up the pace as they're led loyally until, they're over...a small boy, rapt in his surroundings inside a carrier (a plastic cup, cracker pieces and a straw) and enveloped in the tumult of an outdoor weekly venue...but there is so much that took place, bloomed when I just merely wasn't paying attention.
so we keep walking, talking and perhaps even trusting in the moments we have together. i know there's something honest, something real and not lined with that sheen fabric of displacement. we do all show up together here in this strange dilapidated shack, to see a show, perhaps, to see each other, perhaps. maybe there is really no difference.
"I'm doing well."
you'll say, to be linguistically and grammatically proper. perhaps you won't. no matter what you say -no matter what I say- let's try to be sure that we are here.... tonight. there are ghosts to be sure, we all have something to bring. i know i've met some, and yes, brought along my own. but here we are in the thick of the heat and, to be honest, who is going to cool off these memories? whose to say what happened? maybe you. maybe me. either way, i want to promise i won't judge you anymore when i meet you, look you in the eyes and ask...
"how have you been?"
-TAL
beautiful night.
-http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?f
When summer finally arrived, I don't believe we knew what the heat was going to bring. The nights have brought in a macabre warmth that sets apart even the most tolerable late night breezes from those that are thick and full and rushing across the porch. Now we are, it seems, feeling the summer's evenings coming to an end. I watch a show in a small shack that's been here for years, a dilapidated structure stuck in the middle of the sickness of the uber-hip and the something that is genuine. From this point of view, I suppose it's easy to sit back and decorate these folks, this moment, with a bitter taste of urgency. Every piece could be entirely authentic from wherever you stand. I think this authenticity lies in the moment between what is happening and the simple, undiluted point of perception. You remember being there, don't you?
"Beautiful party..."
The connection of voices, carrying their profound and their menial sounds; a boy drops a plastic cup, another falls from a stoop. I hear a voice in the distance asking me where I've been. How did you answer? I choose to answer with the menial, there seems to be nothing in the profound.
"I've been around. I've been good."
My voice only slightly cracks, not because I'm drunk, which I am, but because I am lying. There has been so much beauty, most of it right in front of my face. I'm lying not because I don't want to tell them, but because I'm embarassed that I've missed so much - so much I won't be able to tell them about. I've seen so many incredible instances.... between the lines worn in a middle-aged woman's face, tired and beautiful, trying to bring another into this world without collapsing in unbearble lethargy, to a an old man's shoes that have blown their own stitching in the toes, and still, steadily keeping up the pace as they're led loyally until, they're over...a small boy, rapt in his surroundings inside a carrier (a plastic cup, cracker pieces and a straw) and enveloped in the tumult of an outdoor weekly venue...but there is so much that took place, bloomed when I just merely wasn't paying attention.
so we keep walking, talking and perhaps even trusting in the moments we have together. i know there's something honest, something real and not lined with that sheen fabric of displacement. we do all show up together here in this strange dilapidated shack, to see a show, perhaps, to see each other, perhaps. maybe there is really no difference.
"I'm doing well."
you'll say, to be linguistically and grammatically proper. perhaps you won't. no matter what you say -no matter what I say- let's try to be sure that we are here.... tonight. there are ghosts to be sure, we all have something to bring. i know i've met some, and yes, brought along my own. but here we are in the thick of the heat and, to be honest, who is going to cool off these memories? whose to say what happened? maybe you. maybe me. either way, i want to promise i won't judge you anymore when i meet you, look you in the eyes and ask...
"how have you been?"
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
so much beauty can be exhausting
May. 22nd, 2006 | 07:49 pm
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
road trip: two boys without their girls
May. 19th, 2006 | 01:54 pm
location: the room
-- "Over there are more Boondockers. Yep, Look at 'em! They'll probably stay there all year," he says, and just in case I wasn't sure, "there's a V.F.W. about a mile up there so they can drink all they want." Because that's apparently all that boondockers do around here. Is that true?
I think about the mining shaft he pointed out a few hours earlier (the "real thing"). The story he told me about how he and grandma were traveling through the west. A few hundred miles in they decided to pull over and take a tour through an old mining shaft that had become a local attraction. I imagined a couple I'd never seen, before they wore their years in deep lines along their faces, before all the delicacies of family, before all the time spent “working things out”, before air force bases, before mortgage, before grandchildren. In this moment they are just a young couple, traveling together along the desert highway, pulling over on a small town: Bisbee, Arizona. Simple.
I imagine they’re young bodies as they both stoop down and wander through the moist walls, in the darkness broken by the flashlight of the tour guide. The guide recites a monologue of history and, of course, the functionality of the mine in a town built solely for it's existence. He talks about those who owned the mine, those who walked away as they earned very little money, those who gained nothing and left poor, and those who died inside the shaft and never left at all. The speech is longwinded becuase it's the only moment that an old tour guide finds comfort anymore in an empty town. Then, as a final goodbye, the old man shines his light on a portion of the wall to reveal what they’ve all been waiting for, the piece that brings everyone into these caverns to begin with; a nine-foot by three-foot strip of solid gold inlayed through the side wall. My grandma, not being able to resist, walks right next to the wall and smoothes her beautiful hands along the shine. She feels the edges where shovels and picks once chipped away portions when it was found. She doesn’t care if you’re not suppose to. It's the mysterious lore lodged under the ground. Just as she gets lost in the stone, she feels an arm and a hand wrap slowly around her waist. She knows it’s her lover, her husband, and she holds still and closes her eyes. She feels his other hand slowly slide between her fingers and he grips her hand against the rock. In the dark cave, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. She love the feeling of him next to her, despite how embarrassed he usually is in public. But here in the cave, he’s not embarrassed. He holds her next to him and kisses her sweetly on her neck. He loves her. She knows this.
“You’re grandma and I used to go to the first In-And-Out Burger built in 1947.”
There it was. Everything slowly fell around me, water dripping its last drops.
These stories, this campground, an old burger bar on San Gabriel Boulevard, they all lead back to her. This is the path they took together, these are the highways, the back roads, the same desert, the same dry wind. It’s no wonder he and I have never changed paths on this trip for years. We stay at the same Air Force base. We frequent the same restaurants. This is where she is, because she didn’t leave in that bed on that afternoon. She's out here along the Joshua trees, the Yucca, the lillies.
He misses his traveling companion. I know, because I’m missing mine. We’ve both have become two boys who have lost their girls.
“Your grandma and I we used to go... there was a mine near Bisbee where you could see the gold right there in the walls. Just a nine-foot strip of Gold (*whish*), silver (*whish*), platiunum (*whish*) right there for everyone to see. You should go see that sometime if you’re ever in Bisbee.”
I should.
So we head along the 6, to the 93 and I sit in this oversized home on wheels, and listen to his voice. The skies are opening up a bit.
“Was it up here where that storm hit us?”
“That was up by Wells, I believe.”
Oh. I couldn’t remember. So many moments, the details, of the past that we try to fit together. But we can't all the time. So we recall those things as we close as we can. Sometimes they fade together, double exposed, two pictures of time taken on top of each other. Sometimes two memories just drip together, like two distinct portraits of people we've never met, melting on top each other in the sun. It doesn't have to be true. These moments are too beautiful to get it all right.
“Rocks! Over there.. See, he must still be selling rocks of some sort I don’t know.” We pass a sign along Quartzsite where some vendor, still around after the festival, has mounted a sign reading "Socks".
...hand over my squadrant patch.
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Zizek - documentary
Apr. 27th, 2006 | 11:08 pm
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
a parrallax between us...
Apr. 27th, 2006 | 10:15 pm
"We do not have two perspectives, we have a perspecitve and what eludes it, and the other perspective fills in this void of what we could not see from the first perspective"....
++....Caused by a change in observational position that forms a new line of sight. ++
In my most lost/lacking moments, I seem to be most self-referential. Working with the spaces "between" these past few months....
9:23:40 PM @hotmail.com: you got a lot of fucking dialogue.. and everything you want to say has to be done internal... so that the words are never verbatim from the soul...but a persons certain approach to how they want to get that feeling out..
9:26:20 PM @yahoo.com: but it was so rich.. it had such potential. but i couldn't reign anything.
9:26:48 PM @yahoo.com: i couldn't shape the shadows, and all i had was light. too much.
9:26:58 PM @yahoo.com: there's no way to appreciate that.
these moments with you are my forever.
watch your head.
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
drunk on a modern malaise. could be the weather.
Apr. 26th, 2006 | 06:34 pm
